I have liked a few Allen films, and admired parts of many more, both serious and comical. There is obviously a lot of talent and ideas in them, but I can't help but wonder why so few of his movies are good as a whole work. This is a great example.
The premise of a director going suddenly blind from psychological stresses just as he is about to make his biggest picture is full of possibilities, but too many of the scenes are built around arguments by small-minded people instead of developing humorous or visual situations of any length. We are told that the direction and the dailies of the film being created are chaotic and make no sense, but we are never shown any examples. Instead, we are merely told that the shooting of the movie proceeds week after week with everyone believing a viable movie is being made, even though the cameraman is being driven mad by the poor direction. Well, which is it? We don't get a taste of either the absurdity or the viability of the process to buy into the idea or laugh about it.
Instead, a lot of time is spent with woody Allen's character refuting one gorgeous live-in partner to reminisce and argue with a beautiful ex-wife while rejecting the advances of the movie's young buxom starlet. In other words, Allen's alter-ego is on display yet again with women averaging about half his age. All the while Allen's extremely nervous gesturing and pleading for help as he gropes around blindly makes him look not only very old, but also dim-witted, and certainly not attractive enough to garner this attention from women. What could be funny is played up to such an annoying extent that I lost sympathy and patience for his situation.
That said, there are just enough scenes with humor and good acting (Hack, the director's agent is particularly well cast) that I did chuckle from time to time, the sets, scenes, lighting and the colors are all appealing. It was not in general, a painful experience, just not a very funny or meaningful one either.
The premise of a director going suddenly blind from psychological stresses just as he is about to make his biggest picture is full of possibilities, but too many of the scenes are built around arguments by small-minded people instead of developing humorous or visual situations of any length. We are told that the direction and the dailies of the film being created are chaotic and make no sense, but we are never shown any examples. Instead, we are merely told that the shooting of the movie proceeds week after week with everyone believing a viable movie is being made, even though the cameraman is being driven mad by the poor direction. Well, which is it? We don't get a taste of either the absurdity or the viability of the process to buy into the idea or laugh about it.
Instead, a lot of time is spent with woody Allen's character refuting one gorgeous live-in partner to reminisce and argue with a beautiful ex-wife while rejecting the advances of the movie's young buxom starlet. In other words, Allen's alter-ego is on display yet again with women averaging about half his age. All the while Allen's extremely nervous gesturing and pleading for help as he gropes around blindly makes him look not only very old, but also dim-witted, and certainly not attractive enough to garner this attention from women. What could be funny is played up to such an annoying extent that I lost sympathy and patience for his situation.
That said, there are just enough scenes with humor and good acting (Hack, the director's agent is particularly well cast) that I did chuckle from time to time, the sets, scenes, lighting and the colors are all appealing. It was not in general, a painful experience, just not a very funny or meaningful one either.